The true meaning of Remembrance Day

Somebody should take Hilary Beach aside and explain to her what Remembrance Sunday is all about.

She is the half-witted Labour mayor of Chepstow who urged the local Rifles regiment to march without their weapons at tomorrow's memorial parade.

"Everybody is worried about the rise in the amount of gun crime and violence in this country," she says.

"I am very much against guns and think they are awful things. Killing in any war is awful and I am against this violence."

Yes, Ms Beach, guns and war are indeed terrible - as we will all be remembering tomorrow. (And won't soldiers parading with their rifles remind us of that?)

But we will be remembering, too, that it's thanks to the courage and sacrifice of those who bore arms - and those who still bear them today - that she and every one of us enjoy the freedom and peace we've known in these islands for 60 years.

By mentioning our Armed Forces in the same breath as violent criminals, doesn't she insult the memory of the heroes who suffered and died for us?

Alas, the mayor is far from alone in her failure to appreciate our debt to the Armed Forces.

We are thinking not only of the health and safety buffoons of the Metropolitan police, who've banned a traditional cannon salute in Sutton tomorrow. (Where would this country be if our war heroes had put their safety first?)

Shockingly, the Government itself, which demands so much of servicemen and their families, is guilty of shamefully neglecting the covenant between the nation and its Armed Forces.

This week, Winston Churchill, grandson of the wartime leader, warned that soldiers are "paying the price in blood" for the underfunding of the military.

He was speaking as president of the new UK National Defence Association, a group formed to campaign for proper support for our ill-equipped and undermanned troops, now fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

What have we come to as a nation, when former defence chiefs, senior officers and politicians have to set up a pressure group to demand what should be accorded to our troops and their families by right?

The sacrifices of our servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq - men like Company Sergeant Major Colin Wall, whose widow tells her heart-rending story of courage and loss on these pages today - give a special poignancy to tomorrow's ceremonies.

Yes, it will be a day to give thanks for peace.

But above all, it will be a reminder of the terrible price that so many have had to pay for it, and the duty the Government and the people owe to them.

They bore arms and died, as they are still dying today, so that the rest of us could be free to choose our own rulers, live by our own laws and express our own opinions.

And yes, Ms Beach, that includes even stupid opinions like yours.

Ignoring the public

It's a very simple message, but it's one that seems impossible to get through to the Government: the public wants nothing to do with genetically-modified crops.

This week, the food and farming department admitted that 95 per cent of the 11,000 respondents to its consultation on the subject were opposed to interfering with nature in this way, with consequences that could change the nature of the countryside for ever.

Yet still the Government is pressing ahead with a framework of rules that will pave the way for GM crops.

What's the point of a public consultation, when ministers are determined to ignore the public?